Name: Sweet Stuffing
Ingredients: 1 quart stale bread, diced; ½ cup melted butter; ½ cup sugar; 1 cup raisins; 1 egg; 1½ teaspoons cinnamon; 1 teaspoon allspice; milk, as needed

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the diced stale bread, melted butter, sugar, raisins, egg, cinnamon, and allspice.
Moisten the mixture with milk until it reaches a desired consistency.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, raisin, egg, cinnamon, milk):

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Clovefits about as well
Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, raisin, egg, cinnamon, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.